Certain medicines are temperature sensitive and must be refrigerated to a lower than room temperature such as insulin. These refrigerated medicines cause particular storage difficulties for emergency medical personnel. Ambulances are equipped with heaters, but they are not commonly equipped with refrigeration units. Medicines requiring refrigeration have heretofore been held in cooling packages and even sometimes placed in conventional coolers (see U.S. Pat. Nos. 5,390,797, 5,390,791, 4,250,998, 4,429,793, 4,368,819, 5,405,012 and 276,590). The energy needed to chill the medicine in the cooling packages and cooler is supplied by a medium such as water, ice, dry ice or a chilled gel. Refrigerating medicines in conventional cooling packages and coolers has many drawbacks, particularly when used with ambulatory services. In general, conventional cooling packages and coolers are bulky and difficult to manipulate. Thus, quick and efficient access to the medicine in the cooling packages and coolers is restricted by the cooling packages and cooler per se. Additionally, the chilling medium may spill.
Ambulances are sometimes too active to return to their base to replenish the supply of refrigerated medicines and/or ice, if and when the medicines approach their upper limit of safe storage temperature. Therefore, the manner in which medicines requiring refrigeration are stored may not chill the medicine for the entire shift of the ambulance operators.
It is therefore an object of the present invention to provide a portable cold pack for refrigerating medicines to hold the medicine below the temperature at which the medicine degrades. Further, it is an object to hold the medicine below the critical temperature for a substantial period of time.
It is further an object of the invention to provide such a cold pack that is easily used in an emergency medical situation, namely, the medicinal vials must be quickly and easily accessible to the medical personnel. The device must also be easily and quickly closed and sealed because time is not only of an essence when accessing the medicine for the patient, but also when it comes time to clean up the treatment site and transport the patient for further medical attention.
It is a further object of the invention to provide such a cold pack which adequately seals itself to preserve the chilled atmosphere within the cold pack for cooling medicines and is easily openable.